Eco-Capitalism

It has been one week since Hollywood crowned our environmentalist champion Al Gore and fawned over the greening of the Academy Awards. This past week two private equity firms bought out TXU, the utility firm poised to build 11 coal-fired power plants, and immediately announced its plan to scale back those plans to meet solid environmental efficiency standards. Cutting carbon emissions and improving one's sustainable impact no longer applies strictly to those of us wearing hemp and sporting a nasty beard. The glitterati and glamour of Hollywood along with the ubiquitously powerful leaders in business have taken up "being green" in a way not seen before. Sure Hollywood has had its spouts of self-righteousness and the corporate culture has made strategic PR moves in the past, but never has environmentalism and the conservationist spirit been so, as members of older generations would say, with it.

Today's Washington Post has two articles assessing this newfound interest that has piqued our society's most powerful and most glamorous. Bruce Sterling, creator of the cyberpunk genre, writes about his dot-green future where people are “all about creating irresistible consumer demand for cool objects that will yield a global atmosphere upgrade.” Being green is no longer some moral crusade preached by off-the-grid types, however close to my heart they may be. No, its cool, and its what our consumer society wants. The material nature of our society has focused its attention-deficit gaze upon, not the concept of sustainability, but the products and the lifestyle changes and upgrades that concept brings them. Mr. Sterling calls them “cybergreens” and they’re going to “glam, spend and consume our way into planetary survival.”

His outlook, if correct, will be a prescient reading and one that should produce great results. It should be stated that taking on climate change should not be solely rested upon the fickle shoulders of wanton consumer, but continually prodded and shoved by those of us who see this concept of sustainability for what it is and not for what it reaps.

The other article, penned by Yale Professor Daniel Esty, looks at the moneymaking possibilities of going green. He sees that we are in the midst of a revolution, saying “Environmental progress no longer depends on hundreds of bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency…the burden of innovation and technology development will shift to the private sector.” This is a fairly obvious assumption, and he goes on to mention the potential carbon capping market approaches soon to be forced upon industries and businesses.

This burden placed on the private sector is really not a burden at all, but merely a shift in practice. Businesses who realize this change, as he mentions, must adapt or risk losing the competitive edge. What he fails to mention is that this government-prodded shift is only closing an area of profit making and opening another. Hence eco-capitalism, making money and not ruining our planet.

MW